Here’s the problem…
You love your job.
You’re good at your job.
But to keep your job, you have to do some things that, well, you don’t really enjoy.
Like speaking English.
In front of people.
Your boss. Your colleagues. Foreigners!
Ug.
Meet Aditya
Aditya lives in Hyderabad, India, home also to Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, and so on.
Like most IT professionals, Aditya would rather be solving a complicated problem alone in front of his computer than speaking in public.
But if you want to work for a successful, international company, client meetings in English are a fact of life.
Aditya’s first technique for surviving these meetings was simply to hide from his manager.
When he realised that wasn’t going to be an effective long-term strategy, he started to search for other solutions.
That’s when he got an email from me.
I invited him to try something new, called “chat rooms.”
Like a kid on his first day of school, Aditya didn’t want to go.
He knew he’d be talking with Europeans.
And he believed their English would be better than his.
But he realized that although everyone inside the chat rooms was from a different country and culture, they were all in the same boat — they all needed better English.
This helped him relax and enjoy the conversations.
Now he’s attending every weekend.
After a few months the situation at work also changed.
During a client meeting they were discussing the best way to solve an IT problem.
When Aditya spoke to offer a solution, he could see the worry on his manager’s face.
But the client listened.
The client understood.
And the client liked his idea!
Here’s Aditya: “After the meeting all my colleagues came to me and said that they never expected this kind of conversation with clients from me and praised me.”
After that, he was unstoppable.
In every meeting he was speaking.
Soon after, his manager gave him a promotion.
His new title?
Team leader.
I love a happy ending, don’t you?